Tag Archives: Forestry

House burn 2022-03-28

If you want a southern pine forest, you have to burn every few years to keep the other trees back, and to keep the vines from climbing to the top as ladder fuels.

[Start, spread, finish]
Start, spread, finish

This was a burn around the house, also to reduce the likelihood of wildfires or our other burns getting to the house.

Might be prudent to do it in less than five years, since there was a lot of raking to be done this time. That’s why we took two days to do this five acres.

But we did it with one match. No gasoline or diesel to spread the fire. Just flaming pine straw on rakes. Continue reading →

Fire in wood stove 2020-11-17

It’s that time of year.

[Heat and light]
Heat and light

Plenty of dead oaks to cut up for firewood.

That’s good, but also troubling: too many dead trees due to spells of drought and heat.

Here’s a brief video: Continue reading →

Cat face, beaver pond 2020-06-16

Back in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, my father and grandfather paid off the mortgage on the farm through income from turpentine. This is a catface, where the bark was scraped off a pine tree so its sap would ooze out, to be caught in a metal cup nailed below on the tree.

[Catface and beaver pond]
Catface and beaver pond

The rest of the tree long ago was logged.

Behind the pine tree stump and the adjoining oak tree, you can see a beaver pond. Continue reading →

Phoenix bird 2020-05-10

The firebird appears to be a Carolina wren.

[Carolina wren]
Carolina wren

This Thryothorus ludovicianus didn’t seem to mind that I was three feet from it. Continue reading →

Swamp boat burn 2020-03-02

Dogs like water more than fire.

[Yellow Dog and camouflaged Brown Dog]
Yellow Dog and camouflaged Brown Dog

And yes, Gretchen was putting out fires with a coffee cup and swamp water.

But she found something unexpected. Continue reading →

Prescribed burn, 1.6 acres planted pines 2020-02-24

Here’s why we should have burned this patch last year, but unfortunately weather didn’t cooperate.

[Why frequent burning is necessary]
Why frequent burning is necessary

If we didn’t burn, eventually what we’d get would be an uncontrolled wildfire with much worse flareups than that.

Somebody always complains about burning woods. Let the Longleaf Alliance explain the benefits of fire in a southern pine forest.

It started easy this year. Continue reading →

John Quarterman on the Withlachoochee (audio)

Back at the end of March at a river conference in Roswell, Georgia, I was interviewed for a podcast. Here’s the audio, and here’s the blurb they included:

John Quarterman on the Withlachoochee
Monday, July 9th, 2012

John S. Quarterman was born and raised in Lowndes County, where he married his wife Gretchen. They live on the same land where he grew up, and participate in local community and government.

NPS talks with Quarterman and his observations on starting and strengthening a Withlachoochee Riverkeeper organization at Georgia River Network‘s 2012 Weekend for Rivers.

The water organization has since been incorporated as the Georgia non-profit WWALS Watershed Coalition:

WWALS is an advocacy organization working for watershed conservation of the Willacoochee, Withlacoochee, Alapaha, and Little River Systems watershed in south Georgia and north Florida through awareness, environmental monitoring, and citizen advocacy.

-jsq

PS: They also recorded another podcast which starts out on what may sound like a completely different topic, but which is actually quite related.